Key wheat GRF genes constraining wheat tillering of mutant dmc

Jing Zhang; Junchang Li; Yongjing Ni; Yumei Jiang; Zhixin Jiao; Huijuan Li; Ting Wang; Peipei Zhang; Mengyao Han; Lei Li; Hongjie Liu; Qiaoyun Li; Jishan Niu

doi:10.7717/peerj.11235

Key wheat GRF genes constraining wheat tillering of mutant dmc

PeerJ. 2021 Apr 8:9:e11235. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11235. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jing Zhang^#¹, Junchang Li^#¹, Yongjing Ni², Yumei Jiang¹, Zhixin Jiao¹, Huijuan Li¹, Ting Wang¹, Peipei Zhang¹, Mengyao Han¹, Lei Li¹, Hongjie Liu², Qiaoyun Li¹, Jishan Niu¹

Affiliations

¹ Henan Agricultural University, National Centre of Engineering and Technological Research for Wheat/National Key Laboratory of Wheat and Maize Crop Science, Zhengzhou, Henan, China.
² Shangqiu Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Shangqiu, Henan, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Tillering is a key agronomy trait for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production. Previously, we have reported a dwarf-monoculm wheat mutant (dmc) obtained from cultivar Guomai 301 (wild type, WT), and found growth regulating factors (GRFs) playing important roles in regulating wheat tillering. This study is to systematically investigate the roles of all the wheat GRFs (T. aestivum GRFs, TaGRFs) in regulating tillering, and screen out the key regulators. A total of 30 TaGRFs were identified and their physicochemical properties, gene structures, conserved domains, phylogenetic relationships and tissue expression profiles were analyzed. The expression levels of all the TaGRFs were significantly lower in dmc than those in WT at early tillering stage, and the abnormal expressions of TaGRF2-7(A, B, D), TaGRF5-7D, TaGRF10-6(A, B, D) and TaGRF11-2A were major causes constraining the tillering of dmc. The transcriptions of TaGRFs were significantly affected by exogenous indole acetic acid (IAA) and gibberellin acid (GA3) applications, which suggested that TaGRFs as well as IAA, GA signaling were involved in controlling wheat tillering. This study provided valuable clues for functional characterization of GRF genes in wheat.

Keywords: Expression profiles; GA; Growth regulating factor; IAA; Tillering; Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the open project fund of National Key Laboratory of Wheat and Maize Crop Science, Henan Agricultural University (2020) and National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFD0301101). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.